THE ChristianCentury

Victims, violence and the sacred: The thought of Rene Girard

by Leo D. Lefebure

on two principles, which he calls "mimetic rivalry" and the ELIGIOUS TRADITIONS promise to heal the "surrogate victim mechanism." Mimesis refers to the wounds of human existence by uniting humans to propensity of humans to imitate other people both conultimate reality. Yet the history of religions is sciously and unconsciously. Girard developed a mimetic steeped in blood, sacrifice and scapegoating. The theory of the self in his early work as a literary critic {Deceit, brutal facts of the history of religions pose stark questions Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure about the intertwining of religion and violence. How does vi[French, 1961; English 1965]). Such novelists as Cervantes, olence cast its spell over religion and culture, repeatedly lurStendhal, Dostoevsky and Proust taught him that humans ing countless "decent" peoplewhether unlettered peaslearn what to desire by taking other people as models to imants or learned professorsinto its destructive dance? Is itate. Aware of a lack within ourselves, we there an underlying pattern we can discern? look to others to teach us what to value and The French literary critic and anthropolwho to be. ogist Rene Girard has provided a comCultures Girard observes that the desire to appelling set of answers to these questions. He propriate another persons possessions, claims to have discovered the mechanism that loves and very being may seem innocent at that links violence and religion. The extent do not first, but it poses a fundamental threat to of his claim is even more audacious: he bepractice community life. In imitating our models, lieves that in the mechanism linking viowe may come to approach their power and lence and religion lie the origins of culture. sacrifice threaten their own positionin which A growing number of biblical scholars, may still case they quickly become rivals who tell us theologians, psychologists and economists target not to imitate them. When we imitate the have turned to Girard s wide-ranging theomodels thoughts, there is harmony; when ry to understand their respective fields. certain we imitate the models desires, the model His works have been widely read in his naindividuals becomes our obstacle and rival. tive France, and international conferences have explored the implications of his theoas scapegoats Mimesis thus inexorably leads to rivalry, ry for different fields. Robert Hamertonand rivalry leads sooner or later to violence. Kelly and James G. Williams have interFrom his study of mimetic desire in the preted the Bible in light of Girard s theory. Catholic themodern novel, Girard turned to the relation of violence and ologian Raymund Schwager has used Girard s proposal exthe sacred in early cultures, especially in primal religions tensively in his theological reflections. Working closely and Greek tragedy. In 1972 he published La Violence et le with Girard, French psychiatrists Jean-Michel Sacre (English: Violence and the Sacred, 1977), a work that Oughourlian and Guy Lefort have proposed an "interdiranged widely through the fields of ethnology and anthrovidual" psychology which stresses the radically social napology. In Girard s judgment, the conflicts that result from ture of the self and interprets phenomena such as desire, mimesis repeatedly threaten to engulf all human life. Escapossession, hysteria, trance and hypnosis in Girardian lating violence renders humans more and more like each terms. French economists Paul Dumouchel, Jean-Pierre other, leveling distinctions and sweeping people up into Dupuy and Andre Orlean have interpreted such economever greater paroxysms of violence. Mimesis leading to vioic problems as the market, competition, scarcity, wealth lence is the central energy of the social system. and monetary value in light of Girardian theory. The Colloquium on Religion and Violence meets regularly to exURING THE course of evolution, Girard believes, plore the application of Girard s ideas to a wide range of I a long series of primal murders, repeated endareas, and the colloquium s journal, Contagion: Journal of ' lessly over possibly a million years, taught early Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, publishes research on Gihumans that the death of one or more members rardian theory. A recent book by Gil Baillie, Violence Unof the group would bring a mysterious peace and disveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, has brought Girards charge of tension. This pattern is the foundation of what ideas to a larger audience in the U.S. Girard calls the surrogate victim mechanism. Often the According to Girard, human culture has been founded dead person was hailed as a bearer of peace, a sacred fig-

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ure, even a god. Fearful that unrestrained violence would Jesus, God appears in history as the innocent victim, who return, early humans sought ritual ways to re-enact and regoes to his death as the scapegoat. Far from demanding solve the sacrificial crisis of distinctions in order to channel victims, God identifies with the victims and thus exposes and contain violence. "Good violence'' was invoked to the surrogate victim mechanism as a fraud and deception. drive out "bad violence." This is why rituals from around God responds to our violence with nonviolent love. Pauls the world call for the sacrifice of humans and animals. For conversion turns on the realization that he is persecuting Girard, the sacred first appears as violence directed at a God. The realization that God is on the side of the victims sacrificial victim, a scapegoat. Every culture achieves stais, for Girard, the center of biblical revelation. bility by discharging the tensions of mimetic rivalry and violence onto scapegoats. Scapegoating channels and expels IRARD LAMENTS that throughout its history the violence so that communal life can continue. As mimetic church has largely ignored this message. It has tensions recur, a new crisis threatens, and sacred violence misinterpreted the death of a Christ as a sacrifiis once again necessary. cial offering to a God who demands victims. For In Girard s view, myths from around the world recount centuries the true meaning of the gospel was lost, and the primordial crisis and its resolution in ways that systematChristians continued the cycle of scapegoating others, esically disguise the origins of culture. Later cultures use judipecially Jews. The anti-Jewish texts of the late Middle ciary systems to contain violence. But even when cultures no Ages offer Girard some of the clearest examples of th$ longer practice sacrifice directly, they still continue to target scapegoating mechanism at work. certain individuals or groups as scapegoats so that violence At last, however, the message has begun to register. Acwill not overflow its banks and threaten others. The lynch cording to Girard, modern movements on behalf of opmob is at the foundation of social order. pressed peoples, even though often outside or opposed to According to Girard, every culture arisestablished Christianity, are the heirs of the es from the incessantly repeated patterns Hebrew prophets and the New Testament. of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. Some As Friedrich Nietzsche noted, Christianity The Bible authors, like the Greek tragedians, caught sides with victims, not conquerors. a glimpse of the underlying dynamics of exposes Prior to biblical revelation, Girard the cycle and the arbitrariness of the claims, cultures achieved relative levels of the "victim choice of victim. But only the Bible, Gisocial stability through scapegoating cermechanism" rard contends, offers a full unveiling of the tain individuals. Over the centuries the impattern of violence and a rejection of it. pact of the gospel on culture has largely deasa Girard began his career as a secular stroyed the power of the surrogate victim fraud. thinker unaffiliated with any religious tradimechanism. Conventional culture is now God tion. The course of his research and reflecin a painful process of disintegration. Histion led him to conclude that the Christian tory as we have known it for millennia is identifies revelation unveils the patterns of violence coming to an end, and we face a dramatic, with the and provides the divine response. Having even apocalyptic, choice: total destruction victims. become convinced that the gospel alone reor total renunciation of violence. veals the full truth of the human condition, What is striking about Girard s proposal Girard entered the Catholic Church. Girard is the wide range of data that do bear the expressed his Christian perspective in Things Hidden Since hallmarks of mimetic rivalry and the surrogate victim mechthe Foundation of the World (French, 1978; English, 1987), anism. The insights of great novelists and dramatists into the a book composed in dialogical form with Oughourlian and volatility of mimetic desire, as interpreted by Girard, are Lefort as interlocutors. His later work, The Scapegoat ^"profound and persuasive on an intuitive level. Similarly, the (French, 1982; English, 1986), continues his exploration of analysis of the surrogate victim mechanism can find much biblical themes and offers a good introduction to his thought. evidence in a wide range of cultures. It is frightening to note how often social bonding has taken place through the excluAccording to Girard s interpretation of the Bible, the sion of certain groups and through periodic violence directpeople of Israel were, like all other people, steeped in the ed at unfortunate individuals. Lynch mobs and pogroms surrogate victim mechanism. But the biblical authors, espunctuate human history. pecially the psalmist, the prophets, and the sages of Israel, When mimetic theory is extrapolated into the explanarecognized the primordial pattern and denounced it. tion of all institutions of all human cultures, however, Many psalms express the perspective of the victims, and doubts arise about the status of the evidence and the asthe author of the Book of Job sides with the maligned Job sumptions of the argument. Too often discussions of Girather than his friends. The Suffering Servant poems prerard tend toward an all-or-nothing choice: either uncritisent the age-old mythological drama: a crowd surrounds cal enthusiasm or skeptical dismissal. It is helpful to disan innocent victim and heaps abuse upon him. The point of view, however, has changed. The biblical author does Leo D. Lefebure teaches theology at the University of St. Mary of not accept the charges; the victim is innocent and is vindithe Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. His article on Buddhistcated by God. Christian encounters appeared in the CENTURY October 16. Such is also the message of the New Testament. In

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tinguish between the intuitive power of Girard s proposal, which can be quite compelling, and the logical status of many of the claims advanced, which remains problematic. Girard has proposed a hypothesis which is most intriguing, but it has by no means reached the stage of empirical verification, and in many cases it is difficult to see how verification could be achieved. The theory of the primal murders and the primordial origin of religion and all human culture in the surrogate victim mechanism is highly speculative because we lack adequate data from the period that Girard takes as foundational for all human culture. Girard seeks to reconstruct a form of mimesis prior to symbols, a mimesis which would take place as the origin of human consciousness and of culture and religious symbolism. However, there remains a gap between what we can reconstruct of the primitive drives of hominids and the emergence of higher cognitive and symbolic capacities. Girard claims to have found the missing link, but one wonders whether the power of mimesis and the effect of the primal murders can really account for the entire range of development of early humans. Was the surrogate victim mechanism really the motor driving the development of the human brain in interaction with cultural factors, as Girard claims? How can we possibly know? In addition, the link between the putative crisis of distinctions and the first manifestation of the sacred remains tenuous. For Girard, "the sole purpose of religion is to prevent the recurrence of reciprocal violence" (Violence and the Sacred). Girard also claims that "humanity's very existence is due primarily to the operation of the surrogate victim." Furthermore, he argues that "the origin of symbolic thought lies in the mechanism of the surrogate victim," and that this mechanism also "gives birth to language and imposes itself as the first object of language." "It is the

surrogate victim who provides men with the will to conquer reality and the weapons for victorious intellectual campaigns." All this seems overstated, and it is hard to see what would count as verification from the earliest periods of human existence.

Works by Rene Girard

Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

OREOVER, THE evidence of later ages is itself ambiguous. There are many texts and practices that fit Girard s theory rather well, but others are less clear. Joseph Henninger has pointed out that many cultures have offered bloodless sacrifices, such as fruits, grains, foods from plants, milk and milk products, and alcoholic libations. These are presented to supernatural beings who often do not need them, and the primary motives are thanksgiving and homage. Henninger argues that the offering of first fruits in many cultures involves intellectual assumptions and emotions that are far removed from the scapegoating patterns that Girard identifies. Moreover, there is no evidence that the sacrifice of humans and animals is more ancient than the offering of first fruits. Girard s theory risks being a tour de force which explains too much by explaining everything. Girard claims that most of historical culture is involved in a conspiracy to cover over its origins, and this sets up a logical difficulty in assessing the evidence. If the surrogate victim mechanism appears only in fragmented form, supporters of the theory can claim that this reflects the attempt to cover over the guilty, violent origins of culture. The problem with such a hidden mechanism is that the claim cannot be refuted. Questions also arise concerning Girard s interpretation of modern history (a perspective that Baillie has made the center of his own work, Violence Unveiled). Girard gives the biblical tradition credit for awakening concern about the plight of victims and for being the driving force in the development of modern science and the quest for social justice. Amid the manifold forces at ^HH play in recent centuries, one factor is named over and over againthe biblical traditionwhile the role of other factors is marginalized or dismissed. Certainly, Christianity had a The Scapegoat. massive influence on the sociopolitJohns Hopkins University Press, ical and intellectual history of Eu1986. rope, but it seems simplistic to posit the subterranean influence of the Things Hidden Since the Foundagospel alone as the driving force of modern cultural history, especially tion of the World. when so much of modern history With Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort. Stanford University understood itself as a reaction Press, 1987. against Christianity. According to Girard, the mass Job: The Victim of His People. murders of the 20th century have Stanford University Press, 1987. occurred because the gospel has undermined the traditional sacrificial A Theater of Envy: William system that previously protected soShakespeare. cieties from outbreaks of unreOxford University Press, 1991. strained violence. Now that the sac-

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rificial system is collapsing, the old mechanisms try more and more desperately to function and so demand more victims. Whether this adequately explains the mass murders of this century is doubtful. Earlier ages knew mass slaughter, but they did not have the technology to kill on the same scale. If earlier centuries had been able to perform actions like the fire-bombing of Dresden or the nuclear bombing for Hiroshima, they probably would have done so. Whether the scale of the purges of Stalin or Mao and other mass murders can be explained as due primarily to the gospels unmasking of the scapegoat mechanism is unlikely.

IRARD CONCLUDES his reflections with an appeal about the future. "For the first time/' he says, humanity faces "a perfectly straightforward and even scientifically calculable choice between total destruction and the total renunciation of violence/' In this apocalyptic context, Girard presents a stirring call to wake up, to acknowledge the dynamics of history, to renounce the mmmmmtmtm^^^ patterns of violence and scapegoating, and to allow the nonviolent appeal for the gospel to transform the (or applying Girardian earth. It is a powerful and moving appeal. Knowing Jesus. However, it is difficult to see how such an all-or-nothing choice for the By James Alison, O.P. Templegate future could be "scientifically calcuPublishers, 1994. lable." It seems more likely that neither alternative will take place, at Raising Abel: The Recovery of Esleast in the foreseeable future. chatological Imagination. Rather than either a total destruction By James Alison, O.P Crossroad, of human life or a total renunciation 1996. of violence, we are more likely to muddle through with limited conViolence Unveiled: Humanity at flicts repeatedly breaking out but not the Crossroads. escalating to total destruction, By Gil Baillie. Crossroad, 1995. whether nuclear or ecological. The Gospel and the Sacred: PoetOne problem in assessing the appeal for nonviolence is that Girard ics of Violence in Mark. does not define exactly what behavBy Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly. ior counts as violence. If violence is Fortress, 1994. something broader than causing physical injury to another person, Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic of the Cross. then different cultures have very different perspectives on what conBy Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly. stitutes violent behavior. The failure Fortress, 1994. to define the meaning of violence On the Way of Freedom. leaves the call for a renunciation of violence vague. The dramatic By Roel Kaptein (with the cooperrhetoric of either total destruction ation of Duncan Morrow). Columba or total renunciation of violence Press, 1993. leaves us in a situation in which the very meaning of effective action is Models of Desire: Ren6 Girard unclear. Is an economic boycott that and the Psychology of Mimesis. seeks to end injustice an act of vioBy Paisley Livingston. Johns Hoplence? At what point do economic kins University Press, 1992.
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sanctions that result in the deaths of children become an act of war? Buddhists pondering the First Precept note that if you boil water, you commit an act of violence against the microorganisms in it. Girard insists on surrendering the distinction between "good" and "bad" violence, but the lack of a working definition of violence leaves the concrete means of influencing the course of events unclear. Alfred North Whitehead asserted with his characteristic playfulness: "It is more important for a proposition to be interesting than that it be true." Propositions for Whitehead are "tales that might be told," visions of possibilities relevant to a particular situation. Even if it turns out that the universalizing claims of Girard s theory are not sustainable, his work nonetheless calls attention to widespread dynamics of cultural and religious life that have too often been neglected by theologians. For this, we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Works about Girard

theory)
Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction. By Andrew J. McKenna. University of Illinois Press, 1992. The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis. By Jean-Michel Oughourlian. Stanford University Press, 1991. Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible. By Raymund Schwager. Harper & Row, 1987. Curing Violence. Edttedby Mark I. Wallace and Theophus H. Smith. Polebridge Press, 1994. Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Creation. By Mark I. Wallace. Continuum, 1996. The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France. By Eugene Webb. University of Washington Press, 1993.
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